Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
Europe falls apart.
Dow down again — 134 points. Oil back below $100.
We’re back in the USA after 5 months in Europe. What a delight it was to be Europe. It’s always a pleasure to watch something fall apart.
How far apart the Old World will fall, we don’t know. But it looks as though big chunks of the continent must be cut adrift…or the whole of it will sink.
[Read more...]We have been exploring the zombification of the US economy. Major industries — finance, health, education and defense — have been taken over by zombies, parasites whose real interest is to transfer wealth to themselves, from the part of the economy that remains productive.
As the economy becomes more zombified, the part of it dominated by these non-productive industries increases, leaving fewer resources for the productive part. And as the productive part weakens, so does the entire economy’s ability to produce real wealth, or grow its way out of debt.
[Read more...]Little by little, one step at a time, the mainstream press is beginning to understand. There was no ordinary recession. There will be no ordinary recovery. And something is very wrong.
A Great Depression? We should be so lucky, writes David Leonhardt in The New York Times:
UNDERNEATH the misery of the Great Depression, the United States economy was quietly making enormous strides during the 1930s. Television and nylon stockings were invented. Refrigerators and washing machines turned into mass-market products. Railroads became faster and roads smoother and wider. As the economic historian Alexander J. Field has said, the 1930s constituted “the most technologically progressive decade of the century.”
[Read more...]Good day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Thanks to each and every one of you dear readers, for your kind words and thoughts yesterday. I truly appreciate them! I’m very lucky to have so many readers that I feel are “friends”… I think about sitting down with a nice hot cup of coffee, and the Pfennig, and me talking to you, as if I was sitting right there with you… If I ever stray from that type of conversation, please remind me of my roots…
[Read more...]Yesterday morning I told you that with the day being the last of the month, we could very well see some currency weakness, as traders square their books, and close out short positions in the dollar. And that’s exactly what I think we saw yesterday… The bias switched from dumping dollars to buying them, but not at breakneck speed, just a gentle flow…
[Read more...]Americans had something to celebrate this Independence Day. QE2 – the Feds’ $600 billion money-printing program – ended on Friday. And guess what? The world didn’t end with it.
Instead, the stock market gave a loud ‘yahoo!’ The Dow rose 168 points. If QE2 is going to be the death of the US economy, the stock market doesn’t see it.
[Read more...]Most of investors’ attention has been fixed on the Eurozone. Europeans wring their hands or curl their lips. They are worried. They are mad. And they don’t know what to make of the situation.
French bankers came up with a plan – much like the Brady bonds of Latin American debt fame. The idea is simply to roll over Greek debt, voluntarily, to 30 years. This is a default…but it’s a graceful default. Lenders lose money – they don’t get their money as promised. But they can still hold their heads up; they’ll get it later. If everything goes well.
[Read more...]Stocks struggled yesterday to reverse a long series of losses. For a while, it looked like they would succeed. But by the time the bell rang, the Dow was down again – 19 points.
Oil held steady at $99. Gold closed down $4, with the euro edging up towards the $1.50 mark.
Are stocks headed down, while the major market trend remains fundamentally bullish?
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Cutting Federal Spending…One Way or Another
The Dow fell 248 points. Oil dropped to $96. And gold down a whopping $46. Why?
“Deficit Effort Nears Collapse”
Thus did yesterday’s Wall Street Journal describe the latest Congressional failure. To put it into perspective, a group of well-meaning, intelligent members of Congress had been asked to do something very simple. Every head of a household in the nation does it. Every businessman does it. Even some college students do it.
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